Arrival City by Doug Saunders

Look around: the largest migration in human history is under way. For the first time ever, more people are living in cities than in rural areas. Between 2007 and 2050, the world’s cities will have absorbed 3.1 billion people. Urbanization is the mass movement that will change our world during the twenty-first century, and the “arrival city” is where it is taking place.

The arrival city exists on the outskirts of the metropolis, in the slums, or in the suburbs; the American version is New York’s Lower East Side of a century ago or today’s Herndon County, Virginia. These are the places where newcomers try to establish new lives and to integrate themselves socially and economically. Their goal is to build communities, to save and invest, and, hopefully, move out, making room for the next wave of migrants. For some, success is years away; for others, it will never come at all.

As vibrant places of exchange, arrival cities have long been indicators of social health. Whether it’s Paris in 1789 or Tehran in 1978, whenever migrant populations are systematically ignored, we should expect violence and extremism. But, as the award-winning journalist Doug Saunders demonstrates, when we make proper investments in our arrival cities—through transportation, education, security, and citizenship—a prosperous middle class develops.

Saunders takes us on a tour of these vital centers, from Maryland to Shenzhen, from the favelas of Rio to the shantytowns of Mumbai, from Los Angeles to Nairobi. He uncovers the stories—both inspiring and heartbreaking—of the people who live there, and he shows us how the life or death of our arrival cities will determine the shape of our future.

Doug Saunders is the European bureau chief of The Globe and Mail. He is the author of Arrival City, which won or was a finalist for several prizes and was published in eight languages around the world.

The New York Times

Mr. Saunders, the European bureau chief for the Toronto newspaper The Globe and Mail, visits the world’s great sprawling shantytowns and slums — he prefers the term arrival cities — on the outskirts of places like Mumbai, Rio, London, Paris, Chongqing and Los Angeles and speaks eloquently for them.

The Guardian

He says the unmet demands of migrants in arrival cities triggered both the Islamic fundamentalist revolution in Iran in 1979 and Hugo Chávez's populist Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela a decade later.

The Wall Street Journal

A well-functioning arrival city connects new arrivals to the villages they left behind, providing ways for them to send money back home and to line up jobs for villagers who follow them to the cities in what is known as chain migration.

Scotsman.com

Travelling across the globe, from Rio de Janeiro's favelas to Nairobi's slums and Berlin's Turkish enclave, Saunders weaves the tales of individual migrants through his vast story, that of the current, great human movement - involving one-third of our species - from the countryside to the city.